The sold out show of Dave Gahan & Soulsavers at the Theatre at Ace Hotel, Los Angeles, CA is now available for online streaming. The band were presenting their upcoming “Angels & Ghosts” album, the 5th full-length studio album from Soulsavers, out on 23 October 2015.

“Angels & Ghosts” is Soulsavers’ second collaboration with Dave Gahan, the frontman of Depeche Mode, as guest vocalist and songwriter, this time released under the moniker “Dave Gahan & Soulsavers”. Soulsavers are an English production and remix team composed of Rich Machin and Ian Glover. In support of the album, a tour with a 10-piece band will follow with 6 shows scheduled in the US and Europe in late October and early November.

From the new album ‘Angels & Ghosts,’ available October 23. Pre-order begins September 11. More information at http://bit.ly/AngelsGhosts

Multi-platinum selling, Grammy Award-nominated recording artist Dave Gahan, along with musical partner Soulsavers, will release a new album October 23rd. Entitled ‘Angels & Ghosts’, this is the collaborators’ second album, following their critically-acclaimed 2012 release ‘The Light the Dead See’. The album will be released in digital, as well as physical CD and vinyl formats, worldwide on October 23rd through Columbia Records. The “utterly riveting” album boasts nine original tracks, all written by Dave Gahan & Soulsavers.

An evolution from their first album, ‘Angels & Ghosts’ proves to be a markedly stronger and more hard-hitting body of work. Listeners can expect to be led through an aural mix of dark, brooding sounds, elements inspired by gospel and blues, and the stark beauty that has become a signature of Dave and Soulsavers’ works. Dave Gahan’s emotionally powerful voice has never sounded better, and drives the album forward over a landscape of meticulously crafted instrumentation.

A transatlantic collaboration, the writing process started with Dave Gahan and Soulsavers’ Rich Machin exchanging demos and ideas from their respective studios in lower Manhattan and rural England. They then recorded the album with additional musicians in studios around the world, including classic locations such as Sunset Sound in Los Angeles and Electric Lady in New York. The end result is a vibrant, live-sounding album, and proof of the “instant and obvious fit” Machin felt writing with Gahan.

To fully showcase the powerful, live nature of the album, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers will bring the project to life in a series of six special shows in iconic, intimate venues across the US and Europe. Starting October 19th at the first show in Los Angeles, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers will perform as a ten-piece band, with shows in New York, London, Berlin, Paris and Milan to follow. Tickets for all shows will go on sale September 18th and select shows will be broadcast and streamed for fans worldwide. Full dates and venues are listed below.

Dave Gahan and Soulsavers are planning a sequel to “The LightThe Dead See” album which was released in 2012. The follow up album will be out by end of 2015.

More news when it gets confirmed.

Soulsavers (also known as The Soulsavers Soundsystem) are an English production and remix team composed of Rich Machin and Ian Glover. To date, the duo has released 4 albums: “Tough Guys Don’t Dance” in 2003, “It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s the Way You Land” (with Mark Lanegan and others) in 2007, “Broken” in 2009 (again, with Lanegan and guest vocalists), and “The Light the Dead See” (with Dave Gahan of DepecheMode).

UK chamber folk outfit SixToes will see the follow-up to their 2008 debut “Trick Of The Night” released on July 14 on Toe Music and titled “The Morning After”. The album will feature the song they recorded with Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan: “Low Guns”. The song was released last year as a single.

Yesterday evening Depeche Mode performed live on the David Letterman show. For those who missed it last night, you can see a high quality video that got upped a few moments ago right after the jump or in the video player of our mobile app. But more alluring to the fans is probably the fact that the full concert was upped on Soundcloud as well.

The Depeche Mode ‘Live On Letterman’ webcast aired last night was recorded at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York and had the following track list:

Intro

Angel

Should Be Higher

Walking In My Shoes

Barrel Of A Gun

Heaven

Personal Jesus

Soft Touch/Raw Nerve

Soothe My Soul

Enjoy The Silence

For many this will be the first time they hear some more new material. Let us know what you think of it.

“You have to know people to build the one car — Der Golf. Das Auto. Enjoy the new tv commercial and discover different cover versions of the famous Depeche Mode Song “People are People”. If you look closely, you might spot a celebrity.”

Sonic Scoop has a new interview out featuring Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode – taking a closer look at his studio in NYC:

New York City and rock stars were made for each other.

Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan has many good reasons to settle in NYC.

Wherever in the world these musical success stories – and we’re talking the multi-multi-multi-multi platinum variety here – come from, NYC still has the power to go from tour stop to adopted hometown for waves of them.

Rock stars move to NYC not to stand out, but to get swallowed up among the teeming millions. But they also continue to create — and with the well-deserved financial windfall that often comes with recording global smash hits, they can take personalized approaches to their creative spaces.

Today’s case in point: Dave Gahan, whose unmistakable voice has been central to the sound of Depeche Mode since that landmark band bowed in 1980. A group with an unmatched ability to produce timeless electronic dance music, Depeche Mode’s shockingly original songs are permeated with intellectual depth, elegance, and artistic devotion.

Little wonder this is one of the most successful bands of all time. They can claim over 100 million in record sales, and their members have collectively faced 30 million audience members in concert – thanks to a parade of huge hit singles including “Enjoy the Silence”, “Just Can’t Get Enough,” and “People are People”.

The band’s 13th album is on the way now, due for release coincident with a tour in 2013. And expectations will be high. Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, and Andy Fletcher earned a GRAMMY nomination for their last album, 2009’s Sounds of the Universe. While his Depeche Mode bandmates transfix with their musicianship on that engrossing record, Gahan’s voice comes through with increased agility – wiser while still somehow sounding younger and more athletic.

Even more recently, Gahan got a turn as lead vocalist for the famed production duo of Rich Machin and Ian Glover AKA Soulsavers. Their just-released collaboration, The Light the Dead See hears Gahan’s vocals grow even more cinematic in scope, in emotionally massive songs like “Gone Too Far” and “Bitterman”. The thought that Gahan could come completely uncaged on the next Depeche Mode album is tantalizing.

Personal Studio, Personal Choice

Gahan has acquired a beautiful vehicle for getting there via his innovative private studio here in New York City. Built into a residential apartment separate from his own home, Studio Blanco has been constructed with a clear mission: capture one of modern music’s most iconic voices.

Kurt Uenala engineers all at Blanco Studio. (all studio photos in article by David Weiss)

The pilot flying this plane is Kurt Uenala. A Swiss-born engineer/producer with sharp engineering skills, deep production experience, programming and songwriting abilities, and an amiable personality, Uenala is a versatile presence at Studio Blanco, helping Gahan to get where he wants to go – as quickly and easily as possible.

Even though Gahan can – and does – make ample use of NYC’s world-class suite of commercial recording studios, Uenala points out that a personal facility is essential for an artist on this level to write, demo new tracks, and also record final vocals – as was done here for many of the Soulsavers and upcoming Depeche Mode songs.

“Money is not necessarily a big issue with successful bands, but still at $2500 a day in a commercial studio, you can’t be as experimental as you can be at home,” he says. “You can work at a personal studio any day and any time, and that can be a big part of the creative process. The mindset becomes, ‘We arranged and finished a song a certain way, but can redo it from scratch if we feel like exploring further.’

“The end result is better than a big room with all of the drama gear. We can book a studio like that for a month, but when that time is up, Beyonce is coming in – so you have to go. At that point money doesn’t help: It’s booked. Not having a deadline is wonderful, and so is knowing the room in and out.”

An Unusual Recording Home

“The room”, in this case, is a personal studio operating on a high very level. The obvious centerpiece of the sun-kissed residential space is a space-age white hut which occupies a large portion of the main living room, without engulfing it – plenty of space remains in the room and the rest of the apartment to provide headroom for writing and relaxing.

The acoustically isolated structure is made by the Barcelona-based company Studio Bricks. A “self-assembly cabin system” that can be constructed by one person in a short amount of time with minimal tools, Studio Bricks are acoustic solutions made specifically with artists, engineers and producers in mind.

According to Uenala, Studio Blanco’s big white box represents the first Studio Bricks deployment in the US. “They’re modules that are really Legos – they snap into each other, but they’re made of sandwich wood and rubber,” he notes. “It’s been here since September, and it really works sonically and in terms of providing acoustic isolation. It reigns in the sound not just of the vocals being recorded, but also of productions and mixes – we have to be able to turn it up.

In the video interview above, Dave Gahan suggests that his time collaborating with Rich Martin in Soulsavers might not be over. Responding to Martin saying “I’m sad to stop. We’re getting to know each other creatively,” the Depeche Mode vocalist says “I think it’s the start of something, with all this stuff. Hopefully we’re going to get to continue the process. I don’t think it has to stop. I’m getting busy now with my band, but I still work on things. I really lived this record, which was a really nice experience.”